It is Sunday, March 16 and there are only 35 days until Easter, so start looking for good buys on the pink ham.  Today we remember the birthdays of Andrew S Hallidie, Jerry Lewis and Erik Estrada.  On this day in 1521 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines, in 1869 Hiram R Revel made the first speech by a black in the Senate and in 1995 the Mississippi House of Representatives ratified the 13^th Amendment and formally abolished slavery (they don’t like to rush into anything down there).  It is Holi Phagwah in Surinam and Curlew Day in Umatilla, OR.

I don’t have a lot to discuss this week.  Sometimes people just behave themselves.  I think they do it to annoy me and to keep me from having things to go on about.  I do have one thing to bring up.  I was watching the Food Network the other evening and it occurred to me that some of their big-time chefs do not really cook anymore.  They claim that they are chefs and restaurateurs (note that there is no “n” in that word), but they spend so much time on TV that I do not see how they could be running a restaurant.

Just about every other show on that network has Bobby Flay on it.  Is this done intentionally?  Do the staffs at his various restaurants ask the network to keep him busy so that he doesn’t get in their way?  He is involved in several shows or is a guest judge or chef or whatever on others.  Frankly, I could do with a little less of him.

Guy Fieri is busy running around to all the diners, drive ins and dives, doing shows with Ann Burrell (who looks like she does her hair by standing in front of a fan and then using a can of hair spray), running around grocery stores, having competitions with Rachel Ray and, now, doing Rolaids commercials.  Have you noticed that you never actually see him cook?  I liked him when he was a competitor on The Next Food Network Star, but now I could stand a little less of him, too.

 Another person they seem to want us to see repeatedly is Robert Irvine.  He has had a couple shows and they all seem to be the same kind of thing.  I am sometimes mildly impressed with what he accomplishes on Dinner: Impossible (yes I know these are old shows), but his Restaurant Impossible is becoming boring.  It is always the same – he comes in, talks to the owners and expresses incredulity over how they have gotten to the state they are in.  Then he has them do a service and finds all sorts of issues. 

Next up is eating the food and his reactions are the same – the fake gagging, spitting out food, etc.  Next he has his designer come in and he tells her what he wants and doesn’t want.  We go through all the drama about not having the place done in time to re-open, the arguments with the owners about how things should be done and all the other repeated stuff we see every week.  He spends some time showing the cooks how to do one or two items for the menu (Note to Robert – PLEASE stop doing that goofy happy dance) and then we go to the big reveal.  In the end he has saved the restaurant, the family, their marriage and found a cure for genital warts.  It has become very formulaic and not too entertaining.

There are others that I could mention, people like Ina Garten who, while I love the recipes she has in her cookbooks, needs to start dealing with real people.  When you have a family come over for a meal and the kids rave about the cauliflower, you have to know they are not real kids or they have been promised some big things if they say how great it is.  While I am not a big fan of many of the dishes Giada de Laurentiis makes, I watch her show for the cleavage. 

Overall, the network needs to get back to cooking and stop all the contests.  I appreciate seeing a chef make a meal out of the bizarre items in the baskets on Chopped, but chances are I will never be stuck with only lemon grass, grape jelly beans, marmoset meat and radishes to make a meal so the show has no real meaning for me.  Besides that, I find the judges to be finicky, not consistent and a little ridiculous.  The rules do not require that they repurpose an ingredient, only that they use it, yet we hear the complaint that they did not change the ingredient.  Of course this is only sometimes.  There are occasions where they get credit for not changing it.

… but I digress.

As I said I don’t have too much to discuss this week.  I hope to be able to talk more about issues next week.  

This week our fact tells us that deer cannot eat hay.  They can; however, eat plants and flowers.  Out where my brother Jack lives the deer are particular.  One year they ate his flowers by color.  Their least favorite was purple.

Anyway, have a good week and be sure to enjoy the Curlew Day festivities in your area.  Oh, and a Happy Holi Phagwah to you all!